Kohlsdorf: On this episode of "Road Trip Iowa," we're traveling the Glacial Trail and White Pole Road scenic byways, from the original landscape of the remnant prairie to a legendary two-lane blacktop...

They knew the value of a good road going through their town.

Kohlsdorf: ...with stops at the hidden gems along the way.

This is our Iowa towel.

I love it.

I didn't want to lose our landmark in Stuart.

Kohlsdorf: Next, on "Road Trip Iowa."

Woman: Kwik Star is proud to be a part of Iowa communities across the state.

Family owned for over 50 years, we're dedicated to treating our guests, employees, and communities as we would like to be treated.

Man: Musco Lighting is an Iowa company that travels across the U.S. and to more than 125 countries to light community recreation fields, stadiums, airports, monuments, and more.

While our reach is global, we're committed to our local communities.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ The White Pole Road Scenic Byway traces a 26-mile section of highway along I-80 just west of Des Moines.

In 1931, this road became part of the transcontinental U.S. Highway 6, bringing travelers of all stripes through central Iowa, from outlaws to beatniks to presidents.

We'll learn the famous names and faces that pass through on the White Pole Road, stop by a one-of-a-kind round gymnasium, meet a creative and driven small-town businesswoman, and tour a church that was resurrected from ashes.

But first, we begin in northwest Iowa along the Glacial Trail Scenic Byway, where the buffalo, the wildflower, and the glacier once roamed.

The Glacial Trail Scenic Byway is a 36-mile loop intersecting O'Brien, Clay, Buena Vista, and Cherokee counties.

Noted for its natural beauty, this section of Iowa was shaped by glacier activity over thousands of years, leaving behind a distinctive landscape characterized by rolling hills and fertile soils.

In the southeast corner of O'Brien County, near the town of Peterson, the Prairie Heritage Center serves as a beacon of education and preservation, celebrating the rich cultural and natural history of the region.

Wilson: This whole entire landscape around here is due to that glacial activity 12,000 to 14,000 years ago.

It's a very unique landscape through the Little Sioux River Valley.

It has the most remnant prairie beyond the Loess Hills.

The Little Sioux Valley along the Glacial Trail has a large amount of remnant prairie along these steep hillsides and slopes along the valley.

They were too steep to plow.

If anything, they've only been grazed.

And so you'll find a lot of biodiversity there that you don't see elsewhere in the state.

A lot of different plants and animals that require this kind of remnant virgin prairie ecosystem.

Kohlsdorf: Visitors can explore miles of hiking trails, which wind through the surrounding prairie and oak savanna landscape, offering breathtaking views of native flowers, grasses, and wildlife.

Inside the center, interpretive exhibits showcase the intricate relationship between humans and the prairie environment through history, from the Indigenous tribes who first inhabited the area, to the European settlers who transformed it into farmland.

In this main level, we have a lot of the different people groups, time periods, kind of that sort of thing.

We do some field trips, bringing kids up.

We talk about the prairie animals.

And then downstairs is kind of where we do a lot of our activities.

Kohlsdorf: Since 2006, nearly 100,000 travelers have pulled off the Glacial Trail Scenic Byway to immerse themselves in the history, ecology, and beauty of the tallgrass prairie ecosystem.

♪♪ Follow the byway east into the town of Peterson, where history comes alive at the Kirchner House and Museum.

The Kirchners were a family of German immigrants who lived first in New York, before traveling west for the promise of agriculture and commerce.

The Kirchners were the first to plow land in Clay County, and in 1867, built the area's first frame house.

The home has been preserved and restored by volunteers.

Stop next door at the Kirchner Museum for a large collection of early farm tools, and to learn how generations of farmers got the job done.

Be sure to call ahead for tours.

While in town, don't miss the Fort Peterson Blockhouse.

Built in 1862 by a company of cavalrymen, Fort Peterson was never involved in conflict and later dismantled.

Today, the blockhouse remains, serving as a reminder of the courage and determination that was required to shape the course of history in small towns throughout northwest Iowa.

♪♪ Continue east on the byway to Buena Vista County, where outside Linn Grove sits InnSpiration Vines & Wines, a boutique vineyard and winery known for its picturesque setting and in-house wines.

Owners Paul and Sheila Thomsen began planting grapes in 2008, and opened their tasting room in 2011.

Paul's farming and engineering background came in handy as the Thomsens got their operation off the ground, but Sheila's passion for hospitality was where inspiration first struck.

Sheila wanted to do a bed and breakfast, and so we actually built the bed and breakfast at that point in time, and just because of the ambiance of having grapes, we decided to plant a vineyard there around the bed and breakfast.

And then that kind of got snowballed into the vineyard here and a vineyard there, and a vineyard out in the field.

Then we started producing grapes and then we thought, well, maybe we have too many vineyards [chuckles] because it's a lot of work.

Kohlsdorf: With their vines planted and the bed and breakfast in full swing, Paul decided to try his hand at winemaking.

But the grapes weren't ready quite yet.

We planted a bunch of apple trees down where we lived along the river, and that was kind of where we started making wine, was with those apple trees.

And that's our first experience with what we call Apple Razz.

And we're still making Apple Razz today.

The idea initially was to sell the grapes, but once we started making wine and people liked the wine, we decided to keep -- keep making wine, so... [ Chuckles ] And open a winery.

And that's when this building started getting built.

Kohlsdorf: Paul oversaw construction of the bed and breakfast and tasting room himself.

No matter the season, Sheila keeps this destination outside Linn Grove busy with activities, from grape picking to live music.

Thomsen: I think we have a great scenic byway here and invite people to come and travel that scenic byway.

And if you're so inclined, we'd love to have you stop and have a glass of wine with us.

Up next, we are headed back in time for a drive down one of America's earliest transcontinental highways.

Buckle up, road trippers.

We're cruising the White Pole Road.

♪♪ Connecting the towns of Dexter, Stuart, Menlo, Casey, and Adair, the White Pole Road Scenic Byway traces an historic thoroughfare in west central Iowa that dates back to the early 20th century.

Gilman: Iowa got the reputation of being a gumbo state because when it would rain or snow, the roads that they had, the dirt roads would just turn to mush.

So, the governor at the time was B.F. Carroll, and he called for a Good Roads Convention in 1910.

So they had all these people, these road enthusiasts and people from communities in all of the counties in Iowa, and they all converged into Des Moines and they had a convention to talk about how they could improve the roads.

So, from that, they came up with the River-to-River Road.

Kohlsdorf: Beyond Des Moines, the River-to-River Road ventured north, but the White Pole Road Auto Club, headquartered in Menlo, argued that their route, part of the cross-state Great White Way, was the shorter and faster path westward.

Gilman: We were very tenacious, the leaders in our community, because they knew the value of a good road going through their town.

They knew that people would travel through there, they'd have money to spend at restaurants and bars and shops and things, and so there was going to be more commerce coming through their town.

Kohlsdorf: The White Pole Road derives its name from the distinctive white-painted telephone poles that lined its route, providing a visual marker for travelers.

In 1931, sections of the White Pole Road became part of transcontinental U.S. Highway 6.

The road served as a vital artery for commerce and travel in that region, bringing all kinds of people through central Iowa.

Gilman: I think people travel because they want to seek opportunities and they want that adventure.

You're always wondering, you know, what's behind that next bend.

And so that gets people to want to migrate.

And so they migrated west.

I mean, the whole western expansion happened right along our corridor.

It started with, like, the stagecoaches, and then you had the railroads and then the Underground Railroad.

Kohlsdorf: Pull over in Adair at the site where Jesse James conducted what is said to have been the first robbery of a moving train.

Motor into Stuart knowing you're firmly in the tracks of outlaws Bonnie and Clyde and beatnik rider Jack Kerouac, whose journey across Highway 6 was immortalized in his classic American novel "On the Road."

Pass by the renovated Stuart Depot, which enabled westward expansion long before roadsters and highways.

Arrive in Dexter, where Bonnie and Clyde nearly met their match at the hands of a local posse.

♪♪ With the advent of the Interstate Highway System in the 1960s, the communities along the White Pole Road experienced less traffic and decreasing economic activity.

In 2002, the White Pole Road Development Corporation was formed to preserve the legacy of this short stretch of blacktop.

In 2016, the White Pole Road became an official State of Iowa Scenic Byway.

Today, the byway stands as a testament to Iowa's rich transportation history, reminding visitors of a bygone era when roads were lifelines that connected communities and shaped the landscape of the American Midwest.

So if you choose to get off, say, in Adair and you're traveling along, you're like, "Oh, my gosh, this is going too slow.

I got to get back on the interstate," the next town is coming right up, and you can hop back on because it never gets further than two miles from Interstate 80.

Lots of times, my husband and I just like to get off an exit and we just like to seek out those little two-lane roads and just slow down and enjoy Americana up close.

You're always going to remember your trip if you go on a byway.

♪♪ Kohlsdorf: On its east end, the White Pole Road Scenic Byway is anchored in Dexter.

The Dexter Community House, known locally as the Roundhouse, is an historic landmark that holds significance both architecturally and culturally.

Built in 1916, the roundhouse served as a hub for community and school events, with seating for a thousand people.

Its distinctive shape appears round, but is in fact elliptical.

Owned by the city, the roundhouse is operated by the Dexter Community House Board, which has added new heating and air conditioning systems, updated restrooms, and a kitchen and office area.

The Dexter Roundhouse continues to host community events and gatherings of all kinds, ensuring this architectural wonder will remain an integral part of Dexter's identity for years to come.

The White Pole Road brought its fair share of historical figures through Dexter, from the famous to the infamous.

Those stories and more are available at the Dexter Museum.

Stanley: Dexter has a lot of history.

Highway 6, the transcontinental highway, runs through Dexter.

Lots of traffic until the interstate was built.

From 1915 to like 1932, there were over 400 amusement parks built in the state of Iowa, and Dexfield Park was one of the first ones, and it was built three miles north of town.

The swimming pool was the main attraction.

It was an Olympic-size swimming pool, and it was fed by a natural spring called Marshall Springs.

They had a merry-go-round, a Ferris wheel.

They had a skating rink.

They had a dance hall.

They had arcade games.

They had restaurants.

But on a weekend, they'd get 3,000 or 4,000 people out there.

It's always exciting when you have a president of the United States visit your town.

Harry S. Truman, he was running for re-election, made Dexter one of his stops because of the National Plowing Match that was taking place north of town.

Around 100,000 people, we think, showed up that day to listen to him give a 29-minute speech.

It kind of jump-started his campaign, and he went on to score an amazing upset in the election.

The board is -- what a fantastic artifact.

A fella by the name of John Bunnell, he was tearing down corn cribs and started noticing these boards that had names and numbers and so on.

They reassembled them, and lo and behold, now we've got them hanging on the wall.

We've talked about the Dexfield Park, and when it was abandoned in 1932 and '33, there was a campground out there.

And we had one of the most infamous gangs in the Midwest show up out there.

Bonnie and Clyde and the Barrow Gang were there.

We have artifacts from the shootout that happened on July 24, 1933, which was the biggest shootout in Dallas County history, by the way.

There was a posse of probably between 50 and 75 people that went out there at a quarter of six in the morning and confronted the Barrows.

They escaped into the woods and eventually made their way to a farmstead and stole a car there and got away to live another day.

Lots and lots of people are interested in Bonnie and Clyde.

I mean, there's people from all over the United States that come to this museum, and they want to know about the Dexfield Park shootout.

And this is the place to come if you want to learn about that.

Kohlsdorf: Almost a century ago, outlaws Bonnie and Clyde took the White Pole Road right here to Stuart, where they knocked off the First National Bank.

Today, the town is reaching people from all over the country thanks to Doe A Deer, a national retailer with a local storefront.

Let's take a look inside.

♪♪ Regan, this is an amazing space.

Tell us about Doe A Deer and how you got this storefront.

Yes.

So, we moved into this space about a year and a half ago.

Prior to us moving in here, it was the Stuart Appliance store.

For us, it's the perfect space as we have a really great divide between our storefront and our warehouse.

I was really passionate about wanting a business on Main Street.

I just think Main Street's the heart of the community.

Regan Doely started Doe A Deer as a side project while working full time as a graphic designer.

Beginning with wedding invitations and logos, she moved quickly into product design and sold her merchandise at local craft shows and through online vendors.

As her customer base grew, so did Doe A Deer's need for space.

In 2022, Doely and her team made the leap to this vintage Stuart storefront.

Our flour sack towels are our best-selling product, far and away.

I hand illustrate all of the designs on those.

I'm a big textile person, and my mom and I are into, like, antiques and thrifting, and so I grew up with, like, the embroidered flour sack towels.

We also have, like, Swedish dishcloths, mugs, bowl covers, just a lot of fun kitchen accessories that can be really great gifts.

So, this is your warehouse.

It's as big as your storefront.

Yeah.

It is.

We started online, and it still is probably a majority part of our business.

So, we do wholesale and sell to other boutiques across the world, really -- like 500 at this time.

Your products are very Instagrammable, for sure.

Well, show us some of them.

Yeah.

These are your towels that you said you're famous for, right?

Yes.

So, this is our Iowa towel, which has been a best-seller for a number of years.

So I kind of just illustrated some, different aspects of the state and included that on this fun towel, so... You have a lot of products and you designed a lot of them.

Walk us through this process.

Yeah.

So, really, I love to start in my sketchbook.

It's kind of my, yeah, the place that I love to go first.

I just, like, sketch out any ideas.

It's definitely not, like, finished product.

It's just phrases or ideas, or sometimes I make word lists.

But like this, for example, is like a holiday design that I designed, actually.

We really are big into seasons around here.

That's when we sell to other stores.

And then for us specifically, too, with our store, when we do a big flip, it's always for a new holiday or a new season to come, so...

So you've always got to be thinking ahead.

Yes, always thinking ahead, always planning like six months in advance at minimum.

So, yeah, this is my -- kind of my place that I go to design or to sketch out all of my initial ideas.

So then, after that, I grab my iPad, and so, I pull up my little trusty illustrating app here.

And then this is where I do all of my hand lettering, all of my illustrations.

So, I will sketch out some of the elements of the design.

Where your graphic design background comes into play.

Right?

Yes, yeah, for sure.

I mean, I actually never thought of myself as an artist in any stretch of the imagination.

I really liked just laying out things on a computer, so never in my mind would I have thought I would be designing and drawing literally everything that you see on all of our products, so it's kind of crazy.

This is really how I do that.

And then I send all of this to my computer and really, like, lay it out fully on my computer.

But after that, I send it off to our manufacturer, and it comes back to me like this.

I love it.

So, you're the artist, but then you're also the business owner.

So, what's it like running your own business?

Yeah.

Like with anything, it comes with challenges, but it's fun.

You're doing something different all the time.

You have all these different hats that you get to wear, which is fun.

And then we're right on White Pole Road, which is really awesome.

We get people coming in frequently that are traveling along the byway and that are just making their stops in each town and exploring what we have to offer.

So it's really a great place to be, and I'm really happy with all that Main Street's becoming here in Stuart.

One of the many historical landmarks in Stuart is the Saints Center.

Once voted the most beautiful church in Iowa, this Byzantine-style structure was built in 1908 and featured an Italian Baroque interior.

For decades, it provided solace, celebration, and a sense of belonging to Stuart's growing Catholic community.

But on August 22, 1995, tragedy struck, and this monument to faith was nearly lost for good.

I was returning from work in Des Moines, and I was on the Eighth Street Bridge on the interstate, and it came on WHO that there was a fire at All Saints Church in Stuart.

The arsonist came out of Des Moines and he had 25 gallons of gas.

He went in the building, in the downstairs first and spread the gas, and then he went upstairs and spread the gas.

And so it started in the basement, the wood floor in the basement, and just spread right up to the dome.

Kohlsdorf: Former parishioner Dick Doherty grew up in Stuart and attended All Saints Church all his life.

After the fire, the building was declared a total loss.

For financial reasons, the Des Moines diocese decided to rebuild at a new site.

That's when Dick and a flock of faithful went into action.

Doherty: My mom, at her house -- I was up there having coffee, and she said, "You have to do something.

They're going to demolish the church."

And so, the church was a landmark for the whole town, not just for Catholics.

It was non-Catholics -- this was their landmark, too.

My family, we wrote a letter to the editor and signed all of our names to it, wanting to get the restoration going or to save the church.

And from that, people contacted us and Project Restore was born at that time.

Kohlsdorf: The Project Restore Foundation was made up of local residents who wanted to see the church rebuilt into a community and arts center.

The group acquired the building from the diocese and raised close to $5 million through a combination of grants, tax credits, and a local bond referendum.

But money was only half the battle.

When we first acquired the church, when I came into it, there was like six feet of rubble.

Everything was falling in.

There was animals living in the church.

It was a mess.

Kohlsdorf: Dick and his team worked first with structural engineers to evaluate the integrity of the steel beams that had held the building's domed roof in place for more than 80 years.

A test revealed the steel had been tempered by the fire and was stronger now than before.

From there, Project Restore and their contractors attempted to rebuild the church just as it was.

The restored building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000, and opened as the Saints Center in 2009.

Today, it's used for community events such as weddings, receptions, funerals, and concerts.

The Saints Center continues to stand tall as a symbol of resilience and unity, remaining a beacon of hope and inspiration for all who pass by this central Iowa community.

I didn't want to lose our landmark in Stuart, and this is our landmark.

I mean, you can see it from the interstate.

When before the interstate was here, you saw it from Highway 6, and it would just draw people off of the road to see what this is in town.

It's still a sacred place, and I still feel it every time I come in here.

♪♪ From the remnant prairie to an historic highway, the Glacial Trail and White Pole Road scenic byways offer all kinds of history to explore.

We explored the impact of glaciers at the Prairie Heritage Center, found inspiration at a winery in Linn Grove, learned the history of the White Pole Road, and we got creative at Doe A Deer in Stuart.

Whether you want to hike the native prairie or just try out life on the road, one of these byways has an adventure for you.

For more on the history, culture, and landscapes along Iowa's scenic byways, join us next time on "Road Trip Iowa."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Woman: Kwik Star is proud to be a part of Iowa communities across the state.

Family owned for over 50 years, we're dedicated to treating our guests, employees, and communities as we would like to be treated.

Man: Musco Lighting is an Iowa company that travels across the U.S. and to more than 125 countries to light community recreation fields, stadiums, airports, monuments, and more.

While our reach is global, we're committed to our local communities.